Warring States Page 14

  “No down-leave?” First Officer asked.

  The captain shook his head. “I see no reason why my crew should suffer because there are questionable influences at large. Downtime will be duly authorized, just exercise your discretion, that’s all. As a matter of fact I’d like to have a word with you and Chief Samons, First Officer. Has anybody got anything else? Thank you, next time.”

  The Ship’s Engineer and the Intelligence officer had both been with Scylla for as long or longer than Captain Irshah Parmin himself. They knew they’d been asked to clear the room, if Doctor Weasel-Boy didn’t. The officer’s mess was emptied within moments, despite the doctor’s evident desire to stay behind and keep up on the events, whether or not they were any of his business. Especially if they were none of his business.

  Once the door had closed behind the Intelligence officer and the clear-signal had sounded, Irshah Parmin stood up. “Will there be trouble, Salli? Strong feelings on board, I gather.”

  First Officer thought for a moment, and shook her head; her expression was one of grudging satisfaction — as though she had decided what was going to happen, and had determined that it was what she would have done in the same place, but couldn’t bring herself to go so far as to admit it, possibly even to herself. “We don’t know what ap Rhiannon is going to do. But if I were her I’d be making liberty as available as possible.”

  Irshah Parmin frowned. “She’ll lose half the crew. And be unable to shift hull.”

  First Officer nodded. “Exactly so. People have had several months to think about what happened at Taisheki Station. What options did the crew have there? But at Emandis Station they can quietly turn themselves back over to Fleet and plead clear and present danger to life and limb.”

  “And she’ll let them.” Irshah Parmin made a face Caleigh recognized, something with a thrust-forward under-jaw and a pursed mouth. “It’s the only way to be sure of their support. And no one who has the chance and doesn’t take it will have much credibility if they try to convince the authorities that they’d been prevented, later.”

  He sat back down again and put his head into his hands, in a rare gesture of perplexity. “I can think of one hopeless case who won’t be leaving. I failed that young officer, Salli. I never got through to him.”

  There was more to it than that. Caleigh knew it. Whatever residual sense of personal responsibility the captain might elect to cherish for his once-officer, there were reasons to be concerned about Koscuisko’s fate if the Ragnarok were left undefended by mass defection; and even more reason for concern should the Ragnarok’s crew not take their first opportunity to extricate themselves from a very awkward situation that could turn lethal at any moment.

  Koscuisko had enemies in Fleet. It went far beyond inter-system rivalry; he had made more enemies than he had inherited, earned them fairly through his own effort and by his own volition. The Intelligence officer had heard a rumor about a Bench warrant out on Koscuisko’s life, but nothing seemed to have come of it. Caleigh would have been surprised if it had, with a Selection pending.

  “You want to talk to him,” Caleigh said, slowly, forgetting in her awe to add “your Excellency” or “Captain” or even “sir.” “All of these years and you haven’t had enough.”

  Koscuisko was ap Rhiannon’s problem. But Irshah Parmin didn’t trust Koscuisko’s captain to be sensitive to some of the specific threats that had accumulated around Koscuisko like the scent of blood and steel and the cold pavement of an alleyway where a man lay dying under a mercilessly clear night sky. Koscuisko had a perfectly good captain of his own, but Irshah Parmin was Caleigh’s captain and First Officer’s as well.

  “Ap Rhiannon will send him down,” he said, straightening up. “She’s sure to. She can’t take the risk of keeping a man like that on board unless she’s sure of him. At least I wouldn’t risk it, and has anybody ever been sure of Koscuisko?”

  Yes, Caleigh thought. Koscuisko’s bond-involuntaries had been sure of him. There was a limit to how well Koscuisko’s bond-involuntaries could protect him, however; against one man in particular even their powers had been limited. That one man had been Andrej Koscuisko, of course, and Caleigh didn’t think anybody could have done a better job of protecting Koscuisko from himself, howsoever incompletely.

  “So when we get to Emandis Station find out where he is, that’s all. I just want to talk to him.”

  He didn’t sound convincing. He didn’t sound convinced. When Verlaine had gotten Koscuisko assigned to the Ragnarok — in a move that had been widely perceived as an act of petty vengeance on his part for Koscuisko’s role in embarrassing the Second Judge and Chilleau Judiciary over the Domitt Prison — Irshah Parmin had taken it almost personally. If I’d only taught him better he might have handled it differently.

  “Are we arresting him?” First Officer asked quietly.

  Irshah Parmin grimaced, as if in pain, and shook his head. “No. No. Protective custody, maybe. Maybe he doesn’t understand the trouble he’s gotten himself in to this time. Just talk. You’ll have to collect whoever he’s got with him, though, so plan accordingly. All right?”

  From the look the First Officer gave Caleigh it was clear that they both agreed on how uncomfortable Irshah Parmin was with this entire conversation. “Very good, sir,” First Officer said. Maybe Koscuisko wouldn’t mind, Caleigh decided; maybe he’d be pleased to come and visit with a former commander, and his Security with him. Maybe it wouldn’t even have to be at gunpoint.

  What lawful pretext Irshah Parmin imagined he could possibly find for poaching on another ship captain’s senior officers Caleigh couldn’t guess, and believed that she knew better than to expect that there was one. “Quiet and discreet. Wouldn’t do to insult the Emandisan home defense fleet, of course, your Excellency.”

  “It’s an internal Fleet matter.” Irshah Parmin sounded genuinely surprised, as though the potential for conflicts in jurisdiction had not occurred to him. “No concern for Emandis either way, surely, Salli. I’ve asked Bassin to run a whisper on it so we’ll know if Koscuisko comes down and where he goes if he does. Thanks, both.”

  Bassin Emer was the ship’s Intelligence officer. So the captain had had this on his mind for some time now. Jurisdiction space was vast; Fleet small by comparison. It was by no means astonishing to contemplate encountering a former officer of assignment at one point or another so long as she, and they, remained in Fleet.

  But she had never imagined herself in a position to detain Andrej Koscuisko. She wasn’t sure how she was going to do it. She could only hope that Ship’s Intelligence would have good information — or, failing that, no information at all.

  Chapter Six

  Convocation

  Chilleau Judiciary had had no shortage of potable water, but Chilleau had been on an ancient delta through which a river had not flowed for octaves, the Sannandor having long since disappeared into a desert that had once been a vast inland lake. People didn’t sit in tubs of water, at Chilleau Judiciary; they showered, or they bathed in public wash-houses and never minded the amount of filtration and purification required to make it cost-effective to run such an enterprise.

  It was an interesting change to be at Brisinje on the river in a world that had been colonized for a mere sixty generations. Jurisdiction had come late to Brisinje and brought wisdom, knowledge, prudence with it. There was no danger that the Reggidout River would suffer the fate of the Sannandor — at least not through the intervention of demands for irrigation or generation of hydroelectric power.

  It was good, yes, but it made Jils a little bit uncomfortable. Padrake had shown her to this luxury suite on an upper floor of one of the beautiful buildings in Brisinje’s judicial center, and left her to rest and change; she’d been somewhat taken aback by the palatial dimensions of the place — a library, a lounge area, a dining room, a bedroom, a washroom the size of her whole apartment at Chilleau, and all with a panoramic view of the river and the mountains beyond. Except for the washroom,
of course, where a person could feel a bit exposed no matter how familiar she was with unidirectional polarization of view-pane materials.

  There wasn’t much by way of a view just now, that was true; the smoke from the launch-fields filled the atmosphere and soiled the beaches, though no hint of any unpleasant odors made it past the filters into her suite. This was an apartment fit for a Secretary, for a First Secretary, for a District Judge; and not for one hard-working supposed-to-be-functionally-anonymous Bench specialist. She’d have to ask Padrake about it.

  After her bath.

  The tub was something to see, round, with benches and steps up, and its water temperature was zone-controlled, and its pulse-jets felt almost as good against her tired muscles as the touch of a professional masseur might have. The fragrance of the water-lotion she’d selected was clean and crisp and very relaxing, and there was a stack of warmed toweling waiting for her when she got out.

  She lay her head back against one of the contoured scallops in the tub’s lip and let her body float on the powerful current of the water-jets, counting the stars that twinkled in the ceiling — cleverly painted so as to appear domed — and traveled across the ceiling in a slow progression possibly designed to follow that of the actual night sky above Brisinje, since she didn’t recognize anything obviously familiar about it. The white noise generator with its transmit in the walls surrounded her with a soothing sound of surf against a shore.

  She could easily fall asleep again, cradled in this huge tub of hot water. But Padrake had said that he’d come back to take her to dinner. She couldn’t risk being caught naked in the tub; she might not get her dinner until breakfast-time, if that happened.

  Reluctantly Jils pulled herself out of the bath, dried herself on warmed towels as soft as a midsummer breeze, wrapped herself in a cool silk robe with full sleeves and long skirts and went out into the bedroom with its plush white carpet and its very large bed to see about getting dressed.

  The bed was the only thing with reduced power to impress her. She had been Andrej Koscuisko’s guest at the Matredonat, she had been the guest of the Autocrat’s Court, she had been welcomed at Chelatring Side in the Chetalra Mountains where the Koscuisko familial corporation had its ancestral seat; she had slept in beds large enough for an entire family.

  The traditional master’s bed in an aristocrat’s household was big enough for the master, his sacred wife, the nurse, and an infant child. The guest bed she’d been provided had been large enough to require a map to get in to and out of. She couldn’t think about the linen bills without shuddering. It was no wonder Dolgorukij households were so large. Keeping up with the sheets would be a full-time job for a crew of six, and she didn’t even want to contemplate how much power it required to dry all of that linen in the wintertime when it could not be hung out to take advantage of the sun.

  She hoped Padrake wasn’t hoping she’d need company to keep her from getting disoriented and lost here. As lovers they had been rather spectacularly successful, that was true; and she still thought of his embrace from time to time, dozing, when she had nothing better to do. But intimacy couldn’t be just picked up where it had been set down, not after the passage of years. Could it? Would she mind very much if he tried? What harm could it do to put everything aside for a few hours and live in the moment, when that moment could have Padrake’s caress in it?

  There was no guessing whether Padrake’s interest remained, she reminded herself, pinning up her hair in front of the huge mirror. She didn’t see much change in the image that was reflected there — she was still short, still square-shouldered; her eyes were still blacker even than her hair, which was still thick and glossy and needed a trim because it was getting to be too heavy to wear comfortably in a tuckaway.

  She’d never had much of a figure; keeping in combat trim tended to harden and re-align any curves. But she had the appropriate feminine secondary sex characteristics in the appropriate locations. So did any other woman in known Space, too — well, by and large. No reason to believe there was anything of peculiar interest to anybody about her body.

  Thinking to invoke the latest news on the reader in the library she went out into the lounge area to get to the other side. Padrake was sitting in one of the great cushioned chairs, watching the colors change as the sun went down and its declining rays caught the ash-particles in the smoke of the launch-fields in new and ever-shifting patterns. Confused — she hadn’t expected to see him there, and she felt at a bit of a disadvantage, being only half-dressed — she stopped, abruptly. Padrake heard something, or perhaps sensed something, and turned his head to look at her over his shoulder.

  “Ready for dinner?” he asked, cheerfully. “I thought you might be tired, so I had something sent up. That way you don’t have to face your footgear.”

  Boots were regulation, but a person got tired of them after five or six days. It was a thoughtful gesture on his part. And why should it bother her to think that she had nothing on under her robe? Padrake didn’t seem to think it was the least bit out of the ordinary.

  “All right.” It would give them a chance to talk. And Padrake hadn’t changed his clothing, so it wasn’t as though he was likely to have courting on his mind. “What’s on the menu?”

  “Cold supper, merely.” He waved her ahead of him into the dining room. “But a very nice view. A little obscured tonight, but it’s an interesting effect when the moon comes up.”

  Fruit. Several beautifully tall flagons of iced beverages, lightly sweetened red citrus, black thick Gremner berry juice, rhyti from fragrant green leaf, more. An immense tray of varietal cheeses, dishes of seven different kinds of pre-cracked but unshelled nuts, several platters of cold sliced meat of one sort or another. A cold cream-cake with ruby-red berry syrup dripping almost obscenely down its snowy flanks.

  Padrake pulled a chair away from the table, politely, and pushed it back in once she’d seated herself. “No waiters,” he said. “I thought you’d rather do without. And I don’t dare risk anyone here hearing one of your better stories, Jils, I’d never live it down. Crackers?”

  Yes, he was. Utterly crackers, but in another sense perhaps than he had meant. “I could get used to this rich living,” she warned, reaching for a bowl of grapes. Huge, purple, seedless, and chilled. Heaven. There was wafer-melon there besides, its layers of succulent orange flesh lifting in tiers from its core as it reacted with the air. “A few days of this and I’ll never go back to Chilleau.”

  “Promise?” he asked eagerly; but then slapped his thigh with one hand in a manner that told her he meant her to take it for a joke. “Well, bring on the milk-baths, then. Why would you want to go back to Chilleau anyway? From what I hear they haven’t been treating you very well. As if anybody seriously thought.”

  Yes, as if anybody seriously thought. But it was kind of him to let her know that he, at least, didn’t believe that she had done it. She wondered if Balkney thought she had. Then she wondered whether Widowmaker was at Convocation as well, because she and the Hangman had married, and the Widowmaker had retired her uniform to bear children — three, maybe four by now. Bloodthirsty babies, if they were anything like either parent, but she’d better not think of babies and baby-making just at this moment with Padrake in the room. His physical presence was so very there. It was distracting.

  “Seriously,” she said, trying to discipline her thoughts. “Is this how Bench specialists live at Brisinje? Not that I’m complaining, and I know I’ll be paying for it. Still. This is the sort of treatment I’d expect out of, say, Aznir Dolgorukij.” Just to pick a benchmark of flamboyant and conspicuous consumption. “What would people say?”

  “Nothing at all, if they have a decent amount of respect for the Law.” Padrake crushed a cracked nut-shell between the heels of his palms and let the fragments drop to the table’s gleaming surface as though he were a shaman, casting bones. “Think of what the life of a Bench specialist is, Jils. We spend years in the worst possible environments, we’re barred
by the nature of our duty from having friends or families, at least for the most part. All we have is each other, and we’re not very good company as a rule, are we? We might as well be Dolgorukij Malcontents, but they live better. We deserve a little taste of the good life for ourselves.”

  He popped the nut-meat into his mouth as if to illustrate his point. “We’re the people who make the good life possible. You can’t hire people like us, we’re not for sale, we do our duty because it’s our duty. And for what? So some Judge who wouldn’t last six eighths on the streets of her own capital can suspect us of murder the moment things go wrong with her plans?”

  Padrake had a persuasive rant to him; he was one of those men who didn’t mind in the least listening to himself talk, and it was all right because nobody else minded either. There was a sort of music to his cadence, when Padrake was on a rant. The closest thing she’d ever heard to approach it was one altogether too-late evening when she’d been in deep cover in some desperately poor hovel of a public-house and a skinny, unwashed Nurail in the corner had started to sing.

  He hadn’t had a good voice. It hadn’t been a pretty tune. It had raised the hair at the back of her neck straight up into the air and sent an electric jolt down her spine to her toes and back up to tingle in the crown of her head, and she’d realized — with the one small portion of her mind that didn’t belong to that dirty, smelly, unkempt Nurail completely and entirely, at that moment — that she was sitting in the presence of a weaver.

  Padrake had a touch of that power in him. She’d wondered, from time to time, whether he was hiding any Nurail at the back of the closet of his genetic profile. “If any of us wanted wealth and power, we’d not have passed the basic psychologicals,” she reminded him. “And you used to be savage enough about Fleet personnel who enjoyed their perks a little too well. Changed your mind?”

  “Now you’re trying to talk sense.” He threw a bit of nut-meat at her. She rolled it up in a slice of filleted cold roast, dipped the roll in mustard-and-vinegar relish, and took an emphatic bite by way of showing how little threatened she was by his behavior. “Stop it. I just don’t see why we shouldn’t enjoy some of the respect that we’ve earned. And we’re going into isolation, don’t forget. Pre-packs. Ugh.”